Poll

Today's Opinions

The death of Senator Edward Kennedy, however not unexpected, has nonetheless left many of us with the familiar feeling that all our best heroes are dead or dying.

As one friend of mine put it when we were discussing his death last week, it seems that all of our lives we’ve been burying Kennedys. It’s been possible to feel, sometimes, that with each death we’ve lost a lot of our hopes for the country and the world. But that’s not what any of the Kennedy brothers would have wanted.

Normal people like sports. I, on the other hand, like politics and that makes Virginia a great place to live. We have elections every year!

This is because Virginia does not hold state and local elections in the same year that federal elections take place. Virginia’s elections follow a cycle that puts them in odd numbered years. This year, Virginia voters will elect a governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general. Virginia governors cannot succeed themselves, so we always get a new governor every four years.

It appears that President Obama and other Democrats may be backing away from the public option health insurance proposal. Hopefully, that is an indication that they are beginning to listen to the citizens opposing this proposal in the town hall meetings and other forums. This is much more productive than calling those citizens “mobs,” “unruly,” “stooges” and “un-American.”

As I continue visiting every county in the 5th District throughout the August recess, I continue to get feedback and questions from constituents about health care reform. Specifically, our neighbors want to know how health insurance reform will help rural America. Our rural areas have almost five percent higher uninsured rate than urban areas, and the current recession means more people are losing access to their employer-based health coverage.

America’s veterans have engaged in one of the noblest forms of public service: defending our nation. These brave, patriotic men and women have helped to liberate victims of oppression, spread democracy across the world and preserve the freedoms our nation was built upon. They have served on aircraft carriers in distant oceans, kept the peace on volatile borders, and patrolled the skies of international hot spots. Theirs is a service marked by humility and born of a love of country. For these selfless actions, we in turn have a responsibility to ensure that our

President Barack Obama has bent over backwards to try and be “bipartisan” about health care reform. From the beginning of his administration, and on every single issue, this president has made what most consider a noble effort to get support for his policies from the other party.